The Sensemakers Club is a community-powered education space where curious people come to grow without performing or pretending to have it all figured out.
Are you a sensemaker?
A sensemaker is someone who helps people understand complex, messy, or ambiguous situations and turn that understanding into better decisions and action.
It’s not a job title.
It’s a role someone plays when clarity is needed. Some people make sense for a season, and some of us are professionals and hobbyists.
You might be a sensemaker if you...
- Translate between teams
- Fix structural issues no one else sees
- Clock patterns others don’t
- Care deeply about clarity and inclusion
- Question what’s next
- Maintain systems that prevent chaos
- Document what others skip
This week at the club
We are on our end of season break this week! No sessions are scheduled. Season 2 starts next week!
Browse our discussion groups or check out our full calendar.
2 PM ET Making Sense of Content + Design
Hosted by Gladys Diandoki & Janine Griffin
This intersectional group explores the intricate relationship between content and design, emphasizing their essential collaboration in creating effective outputs.
2 PM ET Mindfulness & Modeling
Hosted by Joe Elmendorf
This thoughtful group explores the parallels between mindfulness and modeling, emphasizing the integration of mind and body, the significance of presence over outcomes, and the patterns that help us remember what matters.
1 PM ET PUBLIC Ask Me Anything
Hosted by Sammy Voelkel
A public AMA where prospective members can ask honest questions about how the club works, what sessions are like, and who tends to thrive here — a great one to share with curious friends.
2 PM ET Knowledge Management & Governance
Hosted by Dina Bennett & Jane Leuchter
This lively group focuses on collaborative efforts in knowledge management and governance, bringing together individuals tackling complex documentation and change proposals.
2 PM ET Career Transitions
Hosted by Kate Murphy & Alison Gretz
This supportive group focuses on navigating the challenges and opportunities of career transitions, whether you're changing roles, industries, or re-entering the workforce.
2 PM ET IA Office Hours
Hosted by Abby Covert
September's IA discussion explores how to find people who "get it," grow those relationships, and turn them into coalitions that can create real change.
3 PM ET Steering the Movement: Spotlight on Early IA Leadership
Hosted by Cass Fellerman & David Farkas
A live recorded oral history interview series with early IA Institute and IA Summit leaders Peter Boersma, Peter Merholz, and Stacey Surla on the field's growth and challenges.
What’s going on?
Week of August 31, 2026
Abby Covert
Chief Sensemaker
Last week began with Moving Through Fear (Aug 24), which explored the difference between fear, anticipation, and excitement, and how to reframe fear into something more workable, especially when the stakes feel higher at work. Making Sense of The Future (Aug 25) used a fiction-writing exercise built around a single piece of productivity advice to examine how "advice" quietly smuggles in a worldview about who's responsible for success or failure. Making Sense of Neurodiversity & Neuroinclusion (Aug 26) ran a seasonal "carry forward / leave behind / make room for" inventory that surfaced boundary-setting and direct communication as neuroinclusive practices. Making Sense of Facilitation (Aug 27) dug into recognizing and holding healthy conflict as a facilitator, versus the "getting along" culture that can quietly shut a room down. Making Sense of Language (Aug 28) examined code-switching and register-shifting, and asked what it costs -- and who holds the power -- when people change how they speak to fit a room.
Themes from last week:
- Boundaries and direct communication came up again and again as tools of both self-preservation and inclusion.
- When we accept a piece of guidance or a communication norm without examining it, whose burden does it quietly reinforce?
- Naming things precisely came up as a way of moving through discomfort rather than around it.
Gaps between our capability and our confidence create discomfort.
Take our FREE 24-question assessment to reveal the gaps in your unique sensemaker shape.
Request the Sensemaker Assessment